ISE professor named keynote speaker at international conference
Published: Sep 12, 2022 3:00 PM
By Carla Nelson
Alice Smith, the Joe W. Forehand/Accenture Distinguished Professor of the Auburn University Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, will present as a keynote speaker at the 5th International Conference on Intelligent Autonomous Systems (ICoIAS 2022).
The conference, which is hosted by Dalian Maritime University, China, will be held virtually Sept. 23-25. Smith will present on innovative uses of drones for last-mile delivery with a focus on healthcare. The presentation discusses two novel strategies for employing a combination of drones and delivery vehicles, such as trucks, for last-mile delivery to homes and businesses.
“The work is general, but we aim for a healthcare application,” Smith said. “One strategy uses drones to resupply trucks during the day for same-day delivery, as orders are made available at a central depot. The trucks deliver the orders to the customers but do not have to return to the depot during the day since they are being supplied by the drones for new orders. The other strategy integrates a truck with a multi-capacity drone. In this case, either the truck or the drone can make both deliveries and pick-ups, and the drone is launched from and returned to the truck.”
Smith said that a mathematical model is formulated and solved for each strategy. Effective heuristics have also been developed to solve realistically sized problems in reasonable time.
“We show that both strategies offer benefits in customer service and cost of delivery compared to traditional truck delivery only,” Smith said. “We focus our work on healthcare and specifically the delivery and pick up of medical supplies and tests, such as COVID tests, in challenged, rural environments. We are complementing our algorithmic and computational work with virtual field trials (animations) and a limited physical field trial.”
Smith considers it an honor to deliver a keynote address at ICoIAS 2022.
“This conference is co-sponsored by IEEE and is an important forum for research on intelligent autonomous systems, which aligns very well with the large research program my colleague, Dr. Daniel Silva, and I have on drone technology in logistics and manufacturing,” Smith said. “Although the conference is virtual because of the continuing COVID restrictions in China, I am looking forward to reaching many researchers worldwide with this talk.”
ICoIAS provides a premier interdisciplinary platform for researchers, engineers and educators throughout the world to present and discuss the most recent innovations, trends and concerns as well as practical challenges encountered, and solutions adopted in the fields of Intelligent Autonomous Systems.
Media Contact: , carla@auburn.edu, 334-844-1404
Alice Smith's keynote presentation at ICoIAS 2022 will cover innovative uses of drones for last-mile delivery with a focus on healthcare.
